Regular wound cleaning tied to faster healing

A farmer sprays pesticide containing monocrotophos on a paddy field in the Indian state of Tripura. The same cheminal that killed 23 schoolchildren in India this month. New research links depression and pesticides.

By:Reuters, Published on Tue Jul 30 2013

NEW YORK — Chronic wounds such as diabetic foot ulcers and pressure ulcers may heal faster when they are cleaned out frequently, a new study suggests.

So-called debridement involves removing dead or infected tissue and any foreign bodies or bacteria from slow-healing wounds, such as with a scalpel or special cream.

It’s traditionally performed when a patient first comes in with a wound, said Dr. Robert Kirsner, a dermatologist and wound researcher from the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.

“The real question is, how often do you have to do this?” added Kirsner, who co-wrote a commentary published with the new study.

A few small studies have suggested some types of wounds tend to heal faster with frequent cleaning.

For their report, James Wilcox from Healogics—a company that runs wound care centres—and his colleagues tried to expand on those data by reviewing the records of about 155,000 patients treated at one of 525 wound centres.

Between 2008 and 2012, those patients were treated for a total of 313,000 wounds, including diabetic foot and pressure ulcers, surgical wounds and cuts from accidents or other trauma. The average wound was cleaned out twice.

The researchers found that healing time varied by the type of wound, but was typically faster with more frequent debridement.

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Weedkillers tied to depression in farmers

NEW YORK — Farmers who used weedkiller’s were more than twice as likely to be treated for depression than farmers who didn’t use the chemicals, a new study from France found.

Whether the weedkiller’s are causing depression “is not clear,” said Marc Weisskopf, the study’s lead author and an associate professor at the Harvard School of Public Health. “But (the result) suggests we should not be ignoring herbicides just because they’re targeting plants.”

Earlier research on depression and pesticides has focused on insecticides, particularly organophosphates, which are known to be toxic to nerve cells, said Weisskopf.

Monocrotophos, the insecticide that killed 23 schoolchildren in India this month, is an organophosphate, for example.

The use of pesticides has also been linked to Parkinson’s disease among farmers.

As part of a study on Parkinson’s disease, Weisskopf and his colleagues assessed the risks for depression with exposure to any kind of pesticide by surveying 567 French farmers about their use of fungicides, insecticides and herbicides.

The team conducted home visits to get a detailed assessment of chemical exposures, including going over bills for pesticide purchases, looking through farming calendars and inspecting old pesticide containers.

They also asked the farmers whether they had ever been treated for depression.

Weisskopf’s group reports in the American Journal of Epidemiology that 83 farmers, about 15 per cent, said they had been treated for depression. Forty-seven of them had never used pesticides, while 36 had.

Among the farmers without Parkinson’s disease, 37 who had never used herbicides and 20 who had used the weedkiller’s reported being treated for depression.

There was no difference in the risk of having depression among the farmers who had used fungicides or insecticides, compared to those who hadn’t used any pesticide.

But when the researchers took into account factors linked with depression, such as age and cigarette smoking, they determined that those farmers exposed to weedkiller’s were nearly two and a half times as likely to have had depression.

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